China’s Yangtze river shrinks as heatwave, drought threatens crops

Regions that rely on the Yangtze, China’s longest river, are having to deploy pumps and cloud-seeding rockets as a long drought depletes water levels
and threatens crops, and a heatwave is set to last another two weeks.
The Yangtze’s middle and lower reaches have faced temperatures in excess of 40 Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) over the past month, with experts blaming climate change-induced variations in the western Pacific subtropical high, a major determinant of summer weather throughout east Asia.
With the autumn harvest under threat, the agriculture ministry has deployed 25 teams to key regions to take action to protect crops, the Shanghai government’s Guangming Daily newspaper reported.
The heatwave is likely to last for another two weeks, making it the longest sustained period of extreme temperatures since records began in 1961, experts with China’s National Climate Center told the official Science and Technology Daily on Monday.